Photo Friday

It’s been a busy couple days. Yesterday I received copy edits from my publisher, volunteered at my daughter’s school’s book fair, hosted a band parents’ meeting, had a 50 minute phone interview with a Wall Street Journal editor, and caught up with an old friend on Skype. Phew. And that didn’t include the standard school, dinner, and bedtime routines with my kids.

I managed to go through my copy edits for a first look see and am beyond pleased with the amazingly thorough job the copy editors have done. They checked the meaning of every Chinese pinyin word, and even included the tone symbols! That’s not an easy task!

In going through these changes, I found myself reaching for an old friend: my Oxford Concise English-Chinese/Chinese-English Dictionary!

I used this dictionary all the time when I was learning Mandarin and when I traveled to China in college and grad school.

It’s not my first copy, though. The one I used in college became so tattered that I bought another about 20 years ago.

Now as then, I would be lost without this little dictionary. Whoever put it together performed a small miracle. I can’t remember looking up a word and not finding it in this dictionary.

Now that I’ve gone through the edits for an initial look, I’m going to print out the pages and read through them one more time before sending my changes back to my editor by December 30. I’m also working on an in-depth author questionnaire for my publisher due around then, too.